My mother, Mysie Sutherland, who has died aged 90, was a physiotherapist in the field of conductive education, which aims to help people with motor disorders such as cerebral palsy through a series of therapeutic physical exercises and communication techniques.
From a base at Rutland House in Nottingham, a residential care school for children with cerebral palsy, and later at the Ellen Tinkham school, a similar establishment in Exeter, Mysie travelled across the UK and abroad, expounding eonductive education theory. She also trained other physiotherapists in its techniques, as well as the parents of disabled children, so that they could help their children at home.
Mysie was born in Coventry, the fifth child of Amy (nee Nelson), a secretary, and William Dunn, chief engineer at the Alvis car-making company.
When she was classified as “educationally sub-normal” at Loughborough high school, her parents realised that in fact she was just extremely shortsighted, and her marks improved once she was fitted with spectacles.
After leaving school she trained for three years as a physiotherapist at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, after which she worked at Marston Green hospital in the city from 1953 to 1954, the year she married Alistair Sutherland, a trainee engineer who had been a lodger in her family home and shared her strong Christian faith.
Raising three children put Mysie’s physiotherapy work on hold for the next two decades, but in 1973 she was able to return to her profession in Devon, first at Axminster hospital (until 1976) and then for a year at Sidmouth hospital.
When Alistair left engineering and became a priest at St Jude’s Church in Nottingham in 1978, she became physiotherapist at Rutland House, and it was there that she began to take an interest in conductive education.
She remained at Rutland House until 1994, then a return to Devon led her to work again at Axminster hospital and, in 1995, at the Ellen Tinkham school. During this period she also took on various overseas consultancy roles, providing conductive education training to physiotherapists in Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, Israel and the Gaza Strip, meeting there the Palestinian Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat, with whom she bonded over their shared concern for infants with cerebral palsy.
In her spare time she was a counsellor for the Samaritans, enjoyed singing and playing the organ in church, teaching in Sunday school and looking after her garden. She was also renowned for the cakes she baked to sell on Alistair’s church stalls, although he would often enlist family members to buy them for him before the public could get hold of them. Vicar of Dibley-esque, hers were the only cakes he fully trusted.
Alistair died in 2020. She is survived by her three children, Anne, Alistair and me.
